CSV exports showing a field in scientific notation.

[Anonymous]

I have a Power BI report in table format. The client wants the data in CSV format. I export the table to CSV and one of the fields which uses numbers for an ID shows up in scientific notation. For example, the ID is '999999777555335'. The output in CSV is '1.00E+15'. There is an issue in CSV files where a string of numbers longer than 10 characters shows up as scientific notation, even if that string of numbers is defined as text. The column in Power BI is defined as text.

Has anyone found a workaround?

The top picture is the Power BI table. The column in question is 'CTG'. The bottom picture is the CSV output. 

[iRunOutdoors]

Have you tried converting the field/column to a Text format? I had a similar scenario where I had a mix of text and numbers, with some of my 'numbers' displaying as a scientific notation due to character size. During the import process, I added a step to convert that column to a text format and it resolved my issue.

[v-deddai1-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

You must open the csv file with excel. As this is just a limitation in Excel, I suggest you refer to https://best-excel-tutorial.com/59-tips-and-tricks/188-disable-scientific-notation to disable scientific notation

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

Best Regards,

Dedmon Dai

[AlexisOlson · Accepted solution]

This is a really old problem that Microsoft has never fixed.

These links have some workarounds:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/opening-csv-with-very-long-number-as-string/5...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_excel-mso_windows8-mso_o365b/excel-csv-f...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_excel-mso_winother-mso_2010/excel-auto-r...

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22647042/how-to-save-excel-columns-with-long-numbers-into-csv/22...